Conceptual and methodological issues related to folk-biological studies of psychological essentialism
Conceptual and methodological issues related to folk-biological studies of psychological essentialism

Summary/Abstract: Psychological essentialism is claimed to be a naturally selected and/or innate tendency to see certain kinds as essence-based natural kinds. In the context of folk biology, this essentialism allegedly applies to biological kinds (and especially on the folk taxonomic level of generic species). Some authors even suggest that we have an innate folkbiological module that involves certain biological concepts (such as biological inheritance, innate potential, etc.), relevant to folk-biological essentialism. Psychological essentialism and its purported innateness have long been quite extensively discussed, even in recent literature on philosophy of psychology and other relevant contexts, but the basic claims about psychological essentialism and about generic species as the most saliently essentialized folk-biological taxonomic level have remained largely the same over time. These claims are often assumed to derive support from a bunch of canonical studies that have also been frequently referred to in the literature about psychological essentialism In this paper, I discuss some methodological and conceptual issues concerning the studies related to these claims. Based on these studies and my discussion, I argue the following. (1) Despite the scepticism expressed by some authors regarding the notion of innateness, abandoning it or replacing it with some other notion (such as ‘adaptation’) is not feasible. (2) The claims about innateness and evolutionary functions of psychological essentialism are too crude; in order to provide more adequate information concerning the relevant questions, we should study the ‘component’ reasoning patterns of psychological essentialism separately. (3) There might be some domainspecific nuances when it comes to the application of the essentialism-related reasoning patterns to living vs. non-living kinds; hence, people might have innate and at least partly modular cognitive structures for responding to living kinds. (4) Canonical developmental cognitive studies demonstrating folk-biological essentialism usually do not demonstrate the special status of generic species as the most ‘essentializable’ kinds. (5) Even if there is something like a folk-biological module, it is conceptually a lot poorer than has been proposed by authors such as Atran and Barrett.

• Details
• Contents